Oh god, oh god, what just happened, oh god. Why did she do that? My face is burning and I want to cry, I just watched my wife have sex with her prominent on the ground behind the house. There’s a strange feeling in my gut, a pulling, and I bite my lip so hard that I taste blood, and I run up the stairs and slam the door to my bedroom shut behind me. I go to my bed and crawl underneath headfirst so my feet are near my pillow, but I curl myself up in a ball. It’s hot and I can’t breathe, being stuck under here isn’t helping, and I squeeze my eyes shut against the memory. I can see her face, her lips, the curves of her body underneath her dress as she moved, as Keol made her move, he makes her so happy, and she does the same for him. He likes it. He’s not supposed to like it, he’s her prominent, her husband, her favorite husband, she is supposed to be in control, but he started it that time, he pulled her down and she went with him. And I was there while they moved together, I watched the looks on her face when they did what they did, and they looked happy. Keol was smiling and Ava was holding him close to her. Why does he get to have a wife that he loves? It’s not fair. I’ve met so many boys in my life who have been used and abused and thrown away like trash and my biggest fear in life was that I was going to become one of them. I got lucky with my family. Keol got lucky with his wife.
“Aber.”
It’s Nua. I don’t know if he knows I’m in here, and then I feel him touch my head on the blanket. “Aber.”
I make a noise that isn’t words, and he says, “Dinner.”
I shake my head. I feel him sit on the bed next to me, and he lifts up the blanket from my feet, and then throws it off of me. “Aber, what happened?”
I shake my head again.
“Did she do something? Did she tell Ava to do something?”
He assumes it was Miss Lilly, because Ava would never hurt us.
“No,” I murmur. Nua licks his lips, and then stands and leaves the room.
That feeling in my stomach won’t go away. I clench my fists, and then I realize that I’m angry. I don’t know why she did that, with Keol, in front of me, but I want to do it. The realization hits me like a thousand pounds, and I exhale, rolling to my back, and look up at the ceiling. She did it with Keol so that I would get this feeling in me, and the only way to get rid of it is to see what it feels like myself.
I stand up and start to pace. No, this is bad, I’m not supposed to like her, I’m not supposed to want to. But I remember Keol’s face, how his touch was aggressive but gentle at the same time, the noises that Ava made when they were together. I want to make her do that and I want her to make me feel like that.
My father loves my mother. Why couldn’t Keol love his wife? Why couldn’t I?
A few minutes later, Keol comes in the room.
I stop my pacing and stare at him, feeling my face go hot. He just looks at me, raising his eyebrows, and then grins a little. “She’s in her room, if you want to talk.”
I clench my fists again, and he goes into his room and closes the door behind him. I take a deep breath, and then I exhale and go through the bathroom to her room.
Ava is inside. She’s leaning against the couch that sits on the side of her room closer to the bathroom door, scrolling through her phone, and I watch her for a moment. She’s still wearing the dress, and and finally I say quietly, “Why did you do that in front of me?”
She turns to me, a cigarette smoking between her fingers, and then smiles slightly. “You didn’t have to stay as long as you did.”
“I know,” I say quietly.
“Did it make you uncomfortable?” she asks, moving towards me, and I look away. I shrug. “A little.”
“I’m sorry,” she says softly, sounding genuine. “That’s not what I wanted to do.”
“What did you want to do?”
“Keol and I, we just…we do what feels right, Aber,” she says quietly. “That’s what felt right for us, in that moment. But it didn’t for you, and that’s why you left, and that’s okay.”
I don’t look at her. “Why do you only do it with him?”
She smiles slightly and exhales smoke at me. “He’s the only one who wants it.” She inhales again, and smoke curls out of her mouth. “So far.”
I exhale hard out of my nose, and she says quietly, “Are you mad, Aber?”
I bite my lip, and then say, “He likes it.”
She looks at me, her lips splitting into a small smile. “I believe he does, yes.”
I don’t answer.
“It’s okay, Aber,” she says gently, moving more towards me. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable or angry. But it’s natural. What Keol and I feel for each other, we can’t...it just happens. Whatever you’re feeling right now, it’s natural.”
My cheeks burn.
“I don’t know how it made you feel,” says Ava softly, “but I saw your face. All I want to tell you is that you can trust me. That I won’t hurt you.”
She’s my wife. But she’s my wife. I’m supposed to hate her, she’s supposed to hurt me.
“Nua said you married him,” I say quietly, “because you were bored of Keol.”
She laughs slightly, looking away, and then moves away from me, up the two stairs in the middle of her room and towards the other set of windows that look over the beach. She gives a big sigh. “Mother picked Keol for me when I was eighteen. There were even slightly more eligible men back then, so she thought it was too big of a decision for such a young girl to make.”
Her voice holds a hint of mockery as her eyes follow me around the room from where she’s leaning against the wall. I follow her up the two steps, but stand on top of them, acutely aware of the bed in the middle of the room. “How many eligible men are there now?”
She shrugs, taking an inhale on her cigarette before answering. “I dunno. There’s a lot of men who can’t reproduce, less men who can, and even less women in general.”
“Then why do you get to have three of us?” I ask, and she laughs slightly. “I can afford to.”
We look at each other for a moment, daring the other to look away first, and to my surprise she does, out the window. “Aber, do you know what’s happening to us?”
“It’s a problem with males,” I say quietly. “A lot of them are infertile, and no one knows why.”
“Not a lot,” says Ava, still looking out the window over the flower garden. “All of them. All males, by age twenty-five or thereabouts, are going infertile, and we don’t know why.”
I blink. “Oh.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
“Some even before that,” continues Ava. “It’s some sort of genetic flaw that has spread throughout our entire nation. And on top of that, less and less baby girls are being born. This thing seems to want to kill us all. It’s erasing females from the population and rendering the males infertile. Some people think it’s a virus, some people think that some evolutionary switch got flicked for some reason, but there’s really no way to know. How did everyone get it so quickly? No, not exactly, how did every male get this, this defect, and not a single biological female?”
“This has been happening for years,” I say quietly.
“Decades,” she says with a wry grin. “My mother’s mother was young when they discovered why the population was starting to fall so rapidly. It was because no male over the age of twenty-five could have children.
“But we still don’t know why, and that’s why this is happening,” she continues after a moment, circling her finger slowly in the air. “In all that time, they figured out how to test-tube babies, and now every boy who can is getting shoved towards a woman to get her pregnant over and over until we figure out exactly what the hell is happening to us.”
She runs her tongue over her teeth, sighing, and then says, “I wasn’t bored with Keol. My mother gave me someone else, too, but he…”
“Died,” I supply when she trailed off, and she glances over her shoulder at me, and then looks out the window again, over the ocean. “He loved flowers a lot.”
“So does Abigala,” I say quietly, and she looks back at me as if she heard, but just sighs. “And then Nua came along as a replacement because my mother felt so bad.”
“So that’s what we are to you? Replaceable goods?”
“Considering I never wanted any of you in the first place, no. More of a constant nuisance, like gadflys buzzing around my head.”
“You seem to find ways to enjoy yourself nonetheless,” I shoot back, my fists clenching at my sides, and she finally turns all the way back from the window and examines me again, her cigarette hand falling to her side. “Maybe I do.”
“Was I the first one, then?” I ask quietly. “The first one you chose?”
“Yes,” she answers bluntly, moving towards her bedside table to crush her cigarette on the ashtray lying there. “Options are dwindling, and it’s been almost three years with Keol and nothing. I needed someone else.”
“He makes you happy.”
“Oh, yes, he makes me feel good, but he doesn’t make me pregnant.”
“Nua’s not working out for you?”
“I’ve never tried with Nua,” she says, turning back to me, and I blink. “But-”
“I don’t feel anything towards him,” she says. “Nor him to me, and I won’t hurt him. Keol, though. He hates me.”
“We all do,” I say under my breath, and she laughs like she heard me again. Did she hear me mention Abigala before? Why didn’t she ask? “Yes, but he turns it into passion.”
I must’ve made a face, because she laughs again. “Nua’s never expressed an ounce of interest in me and that doesn’t get me excited. But I’ve never once forced Keol to do anything.”
“He thinks you’re bored with him and that’s why you have two more husbands now.”
“Oh, no, I didn’t have anything to do with you or Nua. That was all my mother. And it’s all I’m doing to let her even keep those two alive, considering the fact that nothing has come out of either of them yet, so if anything happens from any of you maybe she’ll be distracted enough not to have the others cast out.”
“You want a child to satisfy your mother?” I ask as she leans against her bed. “What about for yourself?”
“I’m twenty years old,” she says softly, “and the population is falling so rapidly, so scarily, that I have three husbands, two of which are older than I, in the hope that one of them will actually be fertile enough to impregnate me over and over so I can create enough test-tube fetuses to give to scientists to develop and then hand back to me to raise once they’re a year old. I can’t say I’m thrilled.”
“Well, when you put it like that,” I murmur, and she laughs again, but less harsh this time. She runs her tongue over her teeth again and says quietly, “I think Nua is fine with his life here since he doesn’t have to do much, and Keol wants to literally rip the clothes off of me every time he sees me because destroying something of his captor’s makes him feel at least an ounce of control, but what about you?”
“Well,” I say quietly, distracted by the way the thin sleeve of her black dress is sliding off her shoulder. She raises her eyebrows at me. “Well?”
“How can you love us all?” I ask quietly, and she laughs, shaking her head so her hair becomes slightly messy and rumpled. “Love, love has nothing to do with this at all.”
“Well, if Keol hasn’t been too successful,” I say under my breath, the pulling in my gut building as she starts to smile, “and you really need something from at least one of us-”
I don’t finish, because she’s coming towards me, reaching out. She grabs my hands and pulled me into her. Our lips find each other’s, and then break apart again as she pulls my shirt up and over my head, and then tosses it to the side. She nudges me a little so I fall backwards onto the bed, and then, still with our lips pressed together, we move backwards until I’m lying in the center and Ava is sitting on my hips. She grins at me but doesn’t say anything, and her hands travel down towards my waist.
Somehow she turns us around so that I’m lying on top of her, and I feel her pulling my pants off my body. She kicks them away, and I kiss her, and then she moves her head so my lips slide over her jawbone and down to her neck. I feel the strange pulling in my gut and I can feel my face go hot, but Ava does not seem perturbed. Her lips are near my ear, and I hear her say, “You can look.”
I lift my head, and she looks at me, then kisses me again before leaning her forehead against mine. “You can look.”
She’s looking down between our bodies, and I follow her eyes, and then look away. “I…”
“I know,” she says through a slight laugh. “Just…”
I follow her advice and look, and then move my hips. I feel myself press against her, and she makes a slight breathy noise that makes my heart beat faster.
“Yeah,” she says, “just…more.”
I don’t answer. I don’t know what to do, and she places her hands on my hips and pulls me towards her.
I feel myself slide into her, and she inhales as it happens, and then nods. “That’s it.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?” I ask before I can stop myself, and my own voice sounds strange to my ears. She laughs again, her hands still on my hips, and says, “Here.”
I feel like I can’t control myself, my breaths come in pants, and she moves her hands, moving me, and I feel something like I’ve never felt before. If I knew this is what it felt like, I would’ve gotten married way sooner. But only to Ava, I love her, she’s so soft and warm and she’s helping me and I don’t know what to do but she does and I feel so good and she’s making noises that make my stomach roll and my heart beat out of my chest and suddenly I feel something weird and then it all stops.
I don’t think I was supposed to do that. My face burns and I press it into her pillow, over her shoulder, and her hands come up to my back. She seems to give me a little hug, her fingers cold against my bare skin, and then she says, “Aber.”
I don’t answer.
“Aber,” she says again, and I shake my head. She moves a little, and I can tell that she’s laughing. “Are you embarrassed?”
“You’re laughing at me,” I say, my voice muffled into the pillow, and she shakes her head. “I’m not laughing at you.”
But she’s laughing as she says it, and then I feel her fingers on my neck, running up towards my face, and she gently lifts my chin so she can see me. I don’t look at her, but her lips are parted into a smile, and her eyes sparkle. “Aber.”
I make a noise that isn’t words, and she smiles, then kisses me again. Her hand moves, sliding down in between us, and then she touches me.
I break us apart, gasping, and she smiles slightly. “You good?”
I nod. I’m good. I’m really good.
She takes one of my hands in her other and lowers it as well. I feel her gently guide me inside of her again, and then she puts my fingers on her. “Right...yes, right there.”
I duck my head so my forehead is on her shoulder, and just nod as I move my hips again. She makes the noises and my other hand hesitantly touches her breast.
I feel her nod, and my fingers explore her. She is moving slightly, with me, and it makes it feel good, and she likes where my hands are, I think. She’s wet at the bottom and soft at the top, her breasts are small and smooth and warm and fit in my hands and her nipple stiffens when I touch it, and she makes a noise in my ear. I wonder what she thinks of me compared to Keol, I don’t have the body or the muscles like Keol and he knows what he’s doing and how to do it and they just fit so well together, will he be mad at me, is she comparing me to him right now?
One of her hands comes down to join mine and she presses my finger against herself, and moves it, and makes a noise. I think I’m making a noise too, and I don’t know what to do about it. I wonder if I’m heavy on top of her. She doesn’t seem to mind. I wonder what Keol is doing right now. I wonder what Nua is thinking, having a bedroom to himself for the first time in a while. I wonder what Ava is thinking. I wonder if I’m hurting her, but it doesn’t seem like it, it seems like she likes it. She’s used to it, she does it a lot with Keol.
Her other hand wraps around my back again, and I can feel her nails digging into me. I can feel everything happening right now, everything is on fire, Ava is under me and I’m in her and we are one, and she belongs to me right now, there is no one else, nothing else to think about but her lips and her fingers and the curve of her waist and her.
And then I feel the weird feeling again, and Ava makes a funny groaning noise that makes me laugh this time, breathlessly. She puts her hand against my neck, her fingertips brushing my jawbone, and then moves her hand to my cheek, and I lean my head into her palm. Her thumb brushes over my nose and my lips, and then she runs her fingers through my hair. I lie down on top of her, exhausted, and she smiles, pressing her lips against the side of my head, and after a moment I roll away. “What…”
She looks at me, grinning slightly, and then sits up. She yanks on the blankets we’re lying on and pulls it out from under us, her breaths still coming heavy, and then she flops back down on her back. The blanket billows over us, and when it settles she looks over at me, twisting her neck funny so it cracks. “You good?”
“Still good,” I say softly, and she smiles. “Good.”
We both look up at the ceiling for a moment, the canopy over her bed, and then she takes a deep contented breath that turns into a yawn and rolls over onto her side. “Night.”
“Night,” I murmur, moving to my back, and in a few moments she seems to be asleep.
I stare at the canopy, a feeling in the pit of my stomach, different than before. Oh, god. I’m not clean anymore. She took that from me. But I wanted her to, oh, god, I liked it so much, do I love her? No, I can’t, I shouldn’t, but she was gentle and she showed me what to do and she kept asking if I was okay and she’s so nice to me and I suddenly realize that I want to love her.
I look over at her again, and then hold my own hand up in front of me, staring at the ring on my finger. I’m tied to her now, and I can’t leave her. What if she wants to keep doing this with me and I don’t want to? What if she just moves right back on to Keol and forgets about me? Does she care how I feel? I think she does. I think she tries to care and I want to like her, I don’t want her to be my wife because I’m supposed to hate my wife, but what if I don’t? What if I love my wife?
Keol loves his wife. He says he hates his wife, but it’s quite obvious that he cares for his wife. His wife is my wife. I wonder if he wanted to be the prominent. I wonder if he likes it. I wonder if it’s just something he’s learned to live with.
My father loves my mother.
I yawn, and my eyes water. I look at Ava again. She isn’t moving except for her breathing, and I roll onto my other side so I’m facing away from her. This is Keol’s side of the bed. This is the side of the prominent. My mother only ever had one husband; my mother only ever had my father. I remember some of the boys at the shelter talking about being the third or fifth or twelfth husband that their wife had had, that she would sleep with them and then send them away and her prominent would sleep the rest of the night in his spot beside her, I wonder if Keol wants to be back here next to her where he belongs.
My father loves my mother. He doesn’t hate his wife. My mother never forced him to do anything. They were always a team, together, equal. Is that possible with Ava?
I don’t know. I fall asleep.